Money item operated machines such as vending and amusement machines that are required to pay-out and receive money items conventionally comprise an internal acceptor unit as well as an internal hopper unit. Inserted money items such as coins and tokens enter the acceptor which verifies their authenticity and if accepted, may then be directed to a hopper for storage and subsequent payout. The hopper is activated to dispense money items when a payout to a user is required, such as in the case that a user has won a cash or token prize, or as change if, for instance, the user has inserted too much money.
Conventional money item acceptors include a rundown path down which money items travel edgewise through a sensing station having a plurality of sensors. These sensors detect characteristics of an inputted money item, a corresponding signal being provided to a processor that determines the authenticity of the money item. Examples of such acceptors are provided in our GB-A-0 307 880, GB-A-2 169 429 and WO99/23615.
Hoppers for receiving, storing and ejecting coins are well known, an example being described in our EP-A-0080842. This relates to a hopper arrangement referred to as the Universal Hopper, which is manufactured by Money Controls Limited. This device overcomes some of the problems associated with previous hopper designs by employing a conveyor housed within the hopper to transport money items to an outlet. The conveyor comprises a plurality of hingedly interconnected portions, each having a lip designed to form a coin receptacle on the conveyor surface. Normally, the conveyor is stationary, but, when someone playing the machine to which the coin handling mechanism is fitted achieves a winning line requiring a payout to be made, an appropriate signal is generated to start a conveyor motor and drive the conveyor. This results in the conveyor being driven through the coins stored in the hopper so that some coins drop into spaces on the conveyor between to adjacent lips. The coins are thus entrained upwardly towards an exit point, desirably with one coin resting on each lip, to be paid out through an outlet as a prize.
Despite the benefits afforded by the Universal Hopper arrangement, there remain a number of shortcomings when such units are installed in machines with conventional acceptor units. One shortcoming is the size of the gap between the acceptor money item input point and the money item return tray to which coins are directed having left either the acceptor or the hopper. The fact that the acceptor must generally be positioned above the hopper within the machine, and that both units should be manufactured to be secure and relatively impregnable and are therefore quite large, results in a relatively large gap between the user money item input point and return trays. This means that the machine may need to be provided with an area accessible by a user that is large enough to accommodate the relatively widely spaced input point and return tray. The gap between the input point and return tray can also be inconvenient for the user, particularly for gaming machines installed in dimly-lit areas, where the output tray can be difficult to locate.
A further shortcoming of currently used devices is that the acceptor and hopper units must be installed such that there is a continuous coin path between the acceptor coin outlet and the hopper coin inlet. This can prove inconvenient in some vending or gaming machines, particularly when there is a lack of space within the machine. It also makes installing the device complicated and therefore costly.